Sony: "It's not going to take too long to pass 360"
Marketing VP expresses doubts MS console will still be around in 10 years
Sony's senior VP of marketing and head of the PlayStation Network has said that Sony is now "breathing down the necks" of Microsoft in terms of console sales, and predicted that while the PS3 will fulfil its planned 10 year lifespan, the 360 won't be around for as long.
"We can be passionate fans, but I don't think they'll be around in 10 years so I'm very confident we'll pass them within that time frame," Peter Dille said in an interview with IGN.
"I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years. I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start.
"Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them."
Speaking specifically about the PlayStation Network, Dille also backed up recent comments by Kaz Hirai that Sony was looking into charging for new additions to the service.
"It's been our philosophy not to charge for it from launch up until now, but Kaz recently went on the record as saying that's something we're looking at. I can confirm that as well. That's something that we're actively thinking about," he said.
Dille added that the company is pleased with how the PlayStation Home space is performing, saying that December saw the highest traffic yet for the service.
"The average time people spend in Home is about 60 minutes. If you think about that, it's a lot of time. I know you can sit down and game for hours and time gets lost. But think about watching a TV for a half hour or how much time you might spend on a website - there's are kind of bite-sized chunks of time. But to spend 60 minutes on Home is a pretty sticky experience."
People are also spending money in Home. Virtual items become profitable from the day they launch "because it doesn't cost a lot to create a virtual t-shirt," said Dille. And those items also become drivers for gaming content, he added.
"People walk around in Home and if they see someone wearing an artifact from Uncharted or God of War, they might ask, 'Where'd you get that?' and they might go back to that specific game space, learn more about it, become a fan of that game and then go buy the Blu-ray disc."
Wonder if that'll be a GT5 rearview mirror?
Oh wait...(literally!)
This is the main reason why we have fan boys that spout endless amounts of drivel online, if the boys at the top do it 'my console is better than yours' or 'we sold x more than you so we're x times better' then it will never end. Just focus on your console without drawing comparisons to the others and maybe you will get out of the shadow quicker and regain the elite gaming crown from yesteryear of PS2
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Kevin Clark-Patterson on 3rd February 2010 2:16pm
Further still is the gap between X360 and PS3 when the latter launched. Seldin stated it was 7-9 million though I've always known the figure to be closer to 5.5 to 6 million. Check the shipped units data from both companies. X360 has actually gained more units and widened the gap since PS3 launched.
But a very valid point from Kevin. The mudslinging from the execs this generation is out of control. It helps proliferate the "childish" nature of our industry when our figure heads and leaders are equatable to 15 year old fanboys with an inferiority complex.
And PS3 cost around £100 more than 360 for 3 years so that must have had an effect
Indeed! I've heard many a tale of people owning 4 or more X360s throughout their 'careers'. Lots of XNA/XBLA developers will own masses of 360s too, where as not many will be doing that with PS3s
If PS3 does pass it, the 360 will continue to sell very well and that means developers will still make games for it. The inevitable cross platform games means the content has to be made to the lowest common denominator, in terms of processing power.
This means those games on PS3 will not significantly outstrip the same on 360, putting them on a relatively equal footing save for 1st party titles.
With such similar experiences, and providing good extras, (social network etc) Xbox will continue to do well.... and so on.
Adding a subscription to PSN does make business sense though as long as it's implemented correctly i.e. not infringing on the existing free service. And it will be a split free/premium service. If they only do it to added features like cross game chat they are only matching the competition. Yeah it's not great for me the end user who doesn't get the extras free but Sony have to make the dollars.
You can bet XBL will drop the bottom off their subs to offer a free entry level service too.